164 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



Helheiington, use it two indies short- 

 er, and it is no doubt a l)etter frauie 

 for the reduction in leiiiitii. 



After ligiitinji: tlie smoker, Mr. El- 

 wood and I entered the yard, and he 

 proceeded to open a hive while I was 

 lookin<>" on with eager expectancy. 

 The entrances were on tiie under side 

 of the hive. Blowing a little smoke 

 under to drive away tlie guai-ds, he 

 lifted olf a case of sections. I ex- 

 pected to see those frames come apart 

 with a snap, and an onslaugiit of bees. 

 Thei-e was uo snaj) or onslaugiit. He 

 picked lip and handled tlie frames as 

 japidly as you or 1 can handle sus- 

 pended frames ; and I am not sure but 

 he manipulates them more ra[)idly. 



Mr. Elwood then examined contin- 

 uously twenty-five or thirty other col- 

 onies ; and when I came to think of 

 the time he had spent in doing it, of 

 the queens we had seen, of the brood 

 surface we examined, I vvas simply as- 

 tounded. I feel pretty sure I could 

 not have examined the same amount 

 of brood surface in the hanging-frame 

 in so short a space of time. Did he 

 kill any liees? Not one that I saw. 

 Did the frames stick together? Scarce- 

 ly at all ; and yet the bees were hy- 

 brids. Here was a large yard of, say, 

 over a hundred colonies. 1 do not 

 reraeml)er to have asked how long it 

 would take him to examine each one; 

 but at the rate he ham lied tliose before 

 me he would have gone through the 

 whole apiary in four or five houi's, and 

 hunted all the queens besides. He 

 did not move very rapidly; on the 

 contrary, his tnovements were delib- 

 erate, but tlie}'^ counted. 



I am well aware that this is a heavy 

 testimonial for the closed-end frames 

 on the Quinby plan ; but I deem it 

 but just to give it, because I know the 

 beekeei)ers of the west, and those who 

 have been using the hanging-frames, 

 have somehow got the idea into their 

 heads that the closed-end frames were 

 sim[)ly intolerable, and that the bee- 

 keepers who were using them were 

 either very much behind the times, or 



so stubborn as not to be open to con- 

 viction that there might be something 

 better. Indeed, when we consider the 

 fact that nine-tenths of the beekeepers 

 of that section of New York where I 

 visited are using fixed frames, and are 

 intelligent and progressive men ; and 

 when we consider the other fact, that 

 they make l)ees paji^ we must admit 

 that their system is not so clumsy and 

 awkward, after all. Cnpt. Hethering- 

 ton. years ago, used hanging- frames 

 faithfully, and finally discarded them 

 for the closed-end Quinby. Capt. 

 Hetherington, with his three or four 

 thousand colonies, Mr. Elwood, with 

 his 1.300, and a great many others, 

 owning from 300 to 400 colonies in 

 this part of New York, use only fixed 

 frames, some Quinby and some HoflT- 

 man. 



No burr-eombs. 

 While ]Mr. Elw<^od was examining 

 the hives 1 was pleased to note that 

 there were no burr-combs on the tops 

 of the frames. No, I do not believe 

 I saw a single small si^ur. When I 

 came to inquire into the matter, I 

 found he used top-bars fully an inch 

 wide and five eighths of an inch thick 

 — perhaps in some cases one-half 

 inch thick \\\i\\ fixed distances. I em- 

 ])hasize this purposely', because I be- 

 lieve that this is one of the secrets. 

 I could not discover that any of the 

 beekeepers who had used fixed dis- 

 tances with top bars five-eiuiilhs of an 

 inch thick and an inch wide, in that 

 section of country, had used honey- 

 boards. No, a honey-board was a 

 thing that none of them had ever tried. 

 With no burr-combs, what need had 

 they of thein? Now, if I am able to 

 judge correctly, with fixed distances 

 we can have thinner top-bars ; but 

 with hanging-frames and no arrange- 

 ment for automatic spacing, in order 

 to do away with burr-coinbs there must 

 be thicker top-bars. I examined into 

 this matter very carefully all through 

 this trij) ; and since my return home 

 I feel confirmed in what J have said 

 above in regard to the presence or ab- 



